New York Times Launches TimesPeople
The New York Times reading faithful now have a new way to discover what other NYT readers find interesting as well as share articles, videos, slideshows, blog posts, comments on articles, and ratings and reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels with friends.
While TimesPeople is a social network of sorts, MySpace and Facebook it’s not. Safe to say, there won’t ever be embarrasing pictures of you drinking a bit too much at a friend’s picnic on TimesPeople.
MEDIAdeluge here:
- CNET, New York Times’ goes social with TimesPeople
- Social Times, New York Times Goes Social With TimesPeople
- Mashable, The New York Times (Tries) Getting More Social
- Silicon Alley Insider, NYT’s “TimesPeople” Social Network: Another Good Idea From The Times
- Boing Boing, TimesPeople, a lightweight socialnetwork for the New York Times
The NYT has done a nice job with the execution. It’s understated and lightweight and offers much of the functionality one would expect of a social news network, but ultimately its just a network of NYT readers.
TimesPeople is a clear step in the right direction for the Old Gray Lady, but it’s nothing more than a social bookmarking site (like Delicious, Magnolia, StumbleUpon and scores of others) except TimesPeople is limited to readers of the Newspaper of Record.
Currently, TimesPeople is in Beta and is available as a FireFox add-on. The add-on works with Firefox 3.0 and the NYT promises the public launch will work on all major Web browsers.
This is one worth following. It will be interesting to see how TimesPeople evolves over time and to watch and see what other big print publications do as they shift their focus away from print and more toward online.
